


Health Tonics and Love Gardens

by thisnewjoe



Series: Powers, Packs, and Peacetimes [1]
Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Alpha Laura Hale, Beta Derek Hale, Full Shift Werewolves, Gardens & Gardening, Implied/Referenced Rape/Non-con, Laura Hale & Stiles Stilinski Friendship, M/M, Magical Bond, Magical Stiles Stilinski, Slow Build Derek Hale/Stiles Stilinski, Sterek Secret Santa 2020, The Hale House
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-23
Updated: 2020-12-23
Packaged: 2021-03-10 19:21:18
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 5,612
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28102341
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thisnewjoe/pseuds/thisnewjoe
Summary: Stiles and Hale siblings Laura and Derek find themselves face to faces on Hale property in search of answers. The siblings learn that much happened around the night of the Hale fire than they had known, and Stiles tries to figure out how his mother secretly knew the Hales.
Relationships: Derek Hale/Stiles Stilinski
Series: Powers, Packs, and Peacetimes [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2070150
Comments: 9
Kudos: 24
Collections: The Sterek Secret Santa - Edition 2020





	1. The Stiles in the Garden

**Author's Note:**

  * For [leninille](https://archiveofourown.org/gifts?recipient=leninille).



> These are the first three chapters and a complete story within a new storyline I've got several chapter outlines for. All of this came up during development of this Secret Santa Exchange gift, and as more familiar faces are revealed, the tags will be updated accordingly.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> While Stiles replays memories of gardening with his mother, the Hale siblings discuss a return to Beacon Hills.

Stiles has been working on this garden for months. It is colorful now, with tiny bushes he'd groomed into shape and the better airflow they get without the other plants strangling the light and air from the garden. He's been restoring this garden to what it might have once been, and tried to keep remembering what his mom told him about the garden back home.

"These flowers may look nice, but they can also cause healing or harm." He thought in his mother's voice.

This specific phrase stuck with him, and usually when he's daydreaming and not paying attention to what he's saying, he'll speak the words and try to recall the exact details of the garden as it was when his mom was caring for it.

"Why?" he again remembers asking, and he says the same thing aloud every time this happens.

The details of the answer vary, probably because his child mind wasn't really any better at staying on target for even half the time his adult brain can do now. That means that his mom's voice answers the questing with different words, and the theme generally was: "Sometimes a little of a plant can help a person heal from an injury. Give them too much, and they will suffer, may come to harm, and could die." 

It's the stinging nettle that his mother is indicating to him today. He looks at the plant in the present and gives it side-eye. 

"A good cook can turn this nettle into a healthful tea."

Little Stiles can feel himself interrupt her. "I've made tea, mom. It's easy!" He used to be so excited about stuff. He was what... maybe eight years old when this happened?

He favors his mother's memory by having her always say something that humors the younger him. 

"Yes! You can make very good tea. And thank you for doing it! But some teas we can make require very good care. A good cook like me knows how to prepare the stems, or the flowers, or pieces of the root all cut up into tiny pieces of any of these plants." She makes tickling fingers at him and he smiles at the recollection.

"What if the cook uses the wrong pieces?"

"Then instead of healing, maybe nothing will happen. But with some plants, you can make someone worse. They can be hurt forever, and might even die."

Little Stiles did not want to make that kind of tea, and he considered not ever being near tea again.

"Promise me, Stiles, that you will not try to make tea from anything that comes from this garden."

That was an easy promise to keep. The Stiles in his 20s, having these memories, appreciates how well his mother understood how he thought. Under her brief guidance, Stiles cultivated a voracious curiosity and analytical mind. He got over the worries about tea, eventually, but it wasn't until after this gardening thing started that he want and tried to learn more about exactly what were these plants in the plot and what kinds of tea could be made with them.

As he found out later, after many hours and days of looking through cookbooks and materials online, he started to feel like this was a medicinal garden instead of an herb garden for actual cooking.

"And never make tea with anything outside the garden without talking to me first, okay?"

Little Stiles nods again. At that age he loved strawberries, and he thought he might not worry so much about tea if he had some of the best tea with his mom right now. "I want to make the strawberry tea!"

"Oh! That sounds good." 

Little Stiles helped Claudia put the tools away and gather the strawberries and lemon and sugar from their places in the kitchen. They talked about his day at school, and the memory always fades from there.

It is well more than ten years since that day and it's one of his favorite memories of his mother. Many memories stick because they sucked, or because he thinks about them so much he can't tell if they're real or if he made them up.

He does think it's odd that every week, at least once a week, Stiles is at this old burned house in the Beacon Hills Preserve, working on this garden, talking to himself to review what he's learned about these different plants, and making threats at the plants who he still can't identify or which are giving him troubles that day. He's still just as wary of the nettle, but they've got a grudging agreement not to bother each other. For the rest? He'll unlock their secrets soon enough.

It's fair to say that he lets his guard down at this point. Nobody's ever been around here. He expected there would be graffiti on the house or whatever, but no, it's just been the house and this garden, and Stiles taking care of the latter.

He clips a sprig of lavender and adds it to his bag with the rosemary, adds some heather blossoms, and mutters "Calluna" as he snaps them. It's their genus, and they're in the same family as rhododendrons. There are two of those in the yard, not close to the house.

His thought withers as he turns to the house and takes it in with a slow breath. It always seems like the house is watching him, but not seeing him. It's never felt threatening, just... omnipresent, he thinks. 

This house was full of the potential of these many lives. The family suffered, and in his investigation into public records and police records ("Heya, daddio... Can I ask you a question?" being only the most direct route to the files, and not the only one he took), he had learned that the family's absence left some big holes in the town at the time.

Curiously, it was hard to find photos of any of the family members. Even social media didn't have much. The kids weren't in school yearbooks he could get hold of, and he's gone through everything he could find in the school archive, even the old student newsletters. 

He had found a photo of Talia Hale. She was the mother and as far as he could tell, the kind of person everyone in town seemed to know and most respected. He had no idea that Talia's spouse looked like, having seen only the name "Blake Hale" and having no idea who that was.

The dusty family obituary Stiles found in the paper printed after the fire listed several dead. But the count doesn't match what the police logged, and that doesn't match the fire inspector's. The insurance company itself gave a third number in a quote taken by a reporter.

The situation didn't make sense to him, and it bothered him that nobody seemed to know what really happened here. How many Hales were impacted by the fire? Did any escape? The body counts ranged from fewer than ten to the low 20s. Nobody knew if there was a party that night because despite all the fresh vehicle tracks at the scene, there were very few vehicles in the driveway. So where did those other visitors go? The firefighters' work destroyed the scene and they couldn't find any tire tracks that might lead them in a useful direction.

And weirdest of all: He's still not found anything that even hints that his mother and the Hales were affiliated. So this garden and the exact matching one at home, which Stiles and his dad have somewhat neglected after many years of close attention, Stiles still doesn't know why he cares so much about this plot at the Hale house.

He'd explored the ruins many times in his months of gardening. The house sits still and aging, creaking wearily in the winds as it always does. The only trespassers seem to be him and the squirrels. 

He tugs a threatening vine away from the garden and trims it back. It's probably a volunteer left by some bird. 

On his first day here he didn't go in the house, but walked slowly around it, walking his blue bike as he walked the perimeter. It was coming around the back of the house when he caught the scent of a familiar combination of herbs and he discovered his garden out here in the woods.

It is exactly the same layout as at the Stilinski house, but these plants were overgrown and struggling, and the vines were getting close. As he got on his knees and started his first concerted effort at gardening the plot, he started trying to find answers to these two questions: "Why does this garden layout look identical to ours at home?" and, given that the garden does exist in both places, "How did the Hales know his mother?"

* * *

Derek doesn't know how to respond. He had never been an alpha, and would never be, so he'd mostly ignored those lessons when his mom and Laura talked about them. His alpha and sister in one being swore to him years ago that no matter how much they'd already lost, they'll always be near each other.

"Are you alright? Did you hear me?" she glances at him and pokes him. She feels the sensation of being mentally stunned, then gives him an annoyed look. "Why is this weird for you?"

He blinked at her. "You don't think it's weird that for years we've not even talked once about Beacon Hills and now you say that you've spent weeks fighting an unidentified and suspicious pull to return home for a few weeks?"

"No, I said a few months. Three or four, maybe. Who cares? It's still a calling."

Derek looked at her and asked the obvious. "Couldn't this be hunters?"

She shook her head. This wasn't aggressive magic, and she wasn't sure how she knew that. It was more than intuition, though... it was certainty. Werewolves are often sensitive to many kinds of magical activities that may happen around them or to them, and her enhanced abilities told her that this just wasn't like any of that. She considered an odd possibility.

"Maybe it's my wolf?"

Derek rolls his eyes. "We are werewolves, Laura. It's a gift of a greater life, not a spiritual possession."

"Hey, I know that there's no separate little spooky spirit inside any of us beyond what most people seem to think they have. But this is like..." She searches the room until her eyes land in the opposite corner. She points at the TV and clarifies, "It's like I'm getting a new channel, and it's focused on the wolfish instincts, not the human side. Can't you feel it, too?"

He shakes his head. There has been zero sensation of compulsion in Derek to return to Beacon Hills. He would be happy to never return. It was once a beautiful place, but that's lost with everything else and he doesn't want to find any of it again.

"Can you check the pack bond and tell me what you see?"

He glares at her, already tired of this conversation. The alpha sees different things in pack bonds than each member sees. Laura likes to learn what Derek sees, and tells herself that it'll come in handy when she's got a bigger pack. They haven't even tried to connect with any werewolves despite there being many free-roaming supernatural family hanging around. The Hales are a duo that nobody can mess with.

She's persistent, so he focuses and listens with his inner senses and finds the same pack bond with her that he's seen for years. It's identical to how it was before. Nothing new, nothing seeming magical beyond the usual. It's hard to believe her about this when he's got no evidence it's happening.

"Damn. I hate this. I wish I had an emissary to ask."

Derek doesn't know what to think about emissaries, and leans toward not-in-favor since theirs failed to protect them from the hunter assault that lead to his family's near-annihilation. This emissary was newer, replacing their former emissary who had died of a normal, terrible cause like brain cancer. Derek met the new guy once and hated how he smelled of animals and cleaning supplies. The man's day job was as head veterinarian at the Beacon Hills Animal Clinic. 

Last time they talked about him, Laura recalled that he was mostly a quiet man, didn't like giving full answers, and Talia mostly found him annoying, though useful at times. 

Derek stewed on the fresh thoughts of the vet being partly responsible for what happened. Now he's feeling some kind of pull to return, to demand answers, at the very least.

Magic, as far as Derek was concerned, has been far more bother than it's worth.

"I never liked Deaton, but he's all I know." Laura suggested.

"Oh, then all of this was your fault," Derek said in an attempt to lighten the mood. It took a second to realize that he just accused the emissary of letting the family come to harm because he and Laura didn't get along.

"No emissary and no wolf was responsible for what happened, Derek." That left only the implication of the hunter woman he'd let get too close.

With regard to that person, Derek only ever harbors stabbingly angry thoughts about what should happen to her. She'd lied, she'd taken advantage of his life inexperience, and in the end of it all, she failed to murder him with everyone else, and he simmered deep inside from a wound that hadn't healed. His eyes flash.

Laura doesn't look away. He's upset, and he's not great with expressing himself on the best of day. She doesn't flash her eyes back at him. She's not angry, she's sad that he keeps blaming himself. 

Derek reads this on her face and understands. "Fuck!" he mumbles a disappointed apology. "It wasn't your fault." He punctuates the air more softly with a mumbled repeat of the exclamation.

"Derek." She has come to a conclusion and in that tone she's warning him to prepare himself for something he is going to dislike. "I think we need to go back. We'll be careful," she says as he gives her an irritated and skeptical. "We'll stay in another town, sneak in as wolves and investigate the Preserve and the house. Maybe check out Beacon Hills and," she said, conspiratorially, "get some donuts before we leave."

"Leave?"

"We don't have to stay. I just need answers."

He considers this. It's not a demand or a request, it's just what she's going to do and she knows he's coming with her. But the confectionary he'd not thought about in years comes back to him. "I forgot about the donuts! And because of you," he glares at her, "now I have to have one." 

"Perfect!" she says. He makes a good show at faking indignation, but he's heading into his room and looking around. They weren't likely to come back, so he shoots a message to his boss about a family emergency and he starts packing.

She's looking from the main room at his back as he starts sorting things out. He's always the scaredywolf, and she starts to pull snacks together that they'll want for the long drive.


	2. These Wolves are Here to Play

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> And now they meet!

"Iiiiiiiiiiiiiii've been working on the raaaaaaaaaaailroad!" the man shouts. "All the live-long daaaaaaaaayGAACK!" Choking sputters and spitting follows the interruption. The approaching wolves still and listen. 

"What the crap?! I'm working on your stupid habitat here!" A triple spitting sound. "Leave me alone you big dumb m-moth!" 

The wolves glance at each other and share a look that says, "This guy's got worse problems than his big, stupid voice."

Laura steps ahead, leading them closer, keeping the shrubs and other undergrowth between them and the person in the distance. This guy doesn't scream "Threat!" to anyone but himself, but even well-meaning people can lead to tragedy. It would be best, of course, if the guy happened to take off before they got near him.

But if he did, she warns herself, that could mean he knows they're coming. That would make him either a super or a magic user. If he stays for too long, they'll need to scare him out of there so they can take a look around.

Derek made a subvocal growl. He's always preferred the hostile approach to any conflict and she nudges him with a low-pitched growl of denial. 

Derek huffs. He actually huffs at her.

What a whiny puppy.

* * *

"Rodzina," Stiles says to the wolf the second he realizes he's not alone.

And then he slaps his hand over his mouth, uncertain why he's speaking Polish. The wolf regards him, unflinching. "It's Polish for family." This creature is huge! Larger than any dog he's ever met, and it's broad and got a defined mane around its neck. It's a really beautiful and terrifying wolf. Oh, oh god. It's a freaking wolf.

The wolf glances at his chest and tilts its head at him. She seemed to know that word, somehow. How could that even happen? Well, he's happy she hasn't been all growly and dipping her head down and being mean.

"I'm sorry, but there's no food here, and I can't take you home and get you any." With real sorrow, since having a wolf pet would be totally awesome, but a really bad idea, he adds, "You're beautiful, but I can't can't have a pet."

The wolf chuffs at him.

What? A chuff! That's practically falling over with laughter in wolf terms, as far as Stiles is concerned.

"Hey! Don't chuff at me!" He's wiggling a finger at her. It's 10% aggression and 90% cowardice. He focuses on forgetting everything except that 10%. He nervously walks through his thoughts aloud because he can't help his mouth moving of its own accord at this moment.

"Okay, so fine, let's see... I'm gardening here, that's legitimately all I'm doing. No looking for secret treasure at the house or anything. You're coming here passing through or whatever, even though there haven't been wolves in this part of California in decades. I know you understand me, and you're pretending not to. But why don't you talk back?"

He is looking directly into her eyes before consciously realizing he's taking her measure. This is a specific thing he definitely remembers promising himself he'd never do if he were being challenged by a large predator in the wilderness. And yet, he's challenging this alpha wolf—

"You're an alpha wolf? How can there be alpha wolves when the whole scientific hypothesis was proven to be wrong?" He wants to ramble the name of the research article on the subject, and about the way the article was written, but manages to catch hold of his thought trains and redirect. "That's not important right now. It's crazy enough that I somehow know you can understand me clearly."

She's a smart wolf. Human-equivalent intelligence, for sure. She tries not to tilt her head in an approximation of doggy confusion, but it's a projection. Odd how that he's here gardening and along comes this alph—

"WEREWOLF?! You're a werewolf?!"

Stiles describes this later to his father as, "when all hell breaks loose."

The alpha wolf lifts her lips and growls at Stiles, who is immediately cowed. She's joined half a second later by another large wolf, slightly smaller than her as he is a beta, but he's also got very long and sharp and they're massive and this is a very bad place for him to be right now!

"Shit! I'm not delicious! Don't eat me!"

The alpha stops growling again, and seems to be shaking. The other wolf snarls at her. She snarls back.

Of fucking course! "You're siblings?" Okay, that's it, you need to tell me who you are. Between cautiouswolf and hyperprotective wolf," indicating the alpha and the beta in order, "who the hell are you?"

The beta keeps growling but defers reluctantly to the alpha. She studies Stiles, looking at him and not laughing wolfishly anymore. There's no hint of threatening demise, just curiosity. 

It would be too far to say it's quite trust, but it's the recognition that the confusion is mutual and that there is no threat.

Stiles also looks at this as another opportunity to try to talk himself out of the situation. He gives explaining himself another try.

"I was here by accident the first time, and then I found the garden," he waves over to it, easily seen from where the wolves stood. The beta wolf didn't take his eyes off Stiles, but the alpha regarded his handiwork without apparent comment and resumed studying Stiles.

"Keep talking," was the obvious implication. Order. It was definitely an order, and Stiles agreed that he should continue.

"My mom planted a garden exactly like this one at home. So finding such a unique one out here, at the site of," he looks at the house and murmurs, "really bad stuff is just weird." He feels his cheeks tighten and get heavy and a tear slips down his cheeks. "She died before she told me what all the plants are for. As far as I know she didn't even know the family." He turns around, letting embarrassment at his own emotions put his unguarded back at risk of wolfish sneak-attack.

There's a shuffling noise behind him that tugs his attention back and he wipes his face. It's blotchy, and gross, he's sure, but he's looking at the wolves.

Something quiet happened here while he was turned around. The male wolf is looking almost... ashamed in some way, and the alpha turns back to Stiles after a staredown with the beta and seats herself a step closer to Stiles.

He decides not to mention that moving closer is just as terrifying than all of the other scary things they've done because the seated pose is probably just a ruse to get him when he's vulnerable, but...

Thump.

That was a tail. He looks around her sitting form as if trying to find her tail. Her expression reads as, most likely, "You seriously need to chill." Off to the side, the beta just looks mean as ever and ready to chew on his soft and fleshy neck.

He pulls his phone out and texts his dad. He holds up a finger to the wolf who'd risen to her feet again.

"No, just a minute. My dad's expecting me and I need to let him know that I'll be a little late. I'm not telling him about our little one-sided conversation, which you really should join, by the way." The wolves seemed mollified, if not satisfied with the answer. Neither rises to the bait and starts speaking, so the beta keeps his ears rotating around, listening for danger, and the alpha's ears are firmly oriented in his direction.

"Do you know this place?" The ear flick of the alpha and the glance at the house let him connect some dots. "The Hale family lived here and you knew them."

For the next several minutes, Stiles explains what he has learned of the Hales from his look into the school archives, the police and fire reports, the insurance report he'd acquired through a friend of a friend who shall all remain nameless. He tells of the obituary and the news stories and the details that don't make sense. 

He's speculating and journeying down educational, if difficult to follow sidetracks, and mentions one detail that catches the wolves' complete attentions. It was about the catatonic John Doe found a few days later a short walk from the highway.

"Oh? Uhh, I just think maybe there's a connection between that John Doe and the Hale fire. There's too many weird details, things that haven't happened at any other time in this town or probably any town. It's tidy and messy at the same time. I don't trust that."

He's been looking at things on his phone that are pictures or notes or scans of things he's found and looks for the rest of what he discovered about that John Doe.

"Look," he says as he flips the phone toward them. "I found evidence that— Oh, I don't know if you even see in color, or if you can read this in your current shape. Hopefully you're better than other canines about that but you're not answering questions right now, so we'll park that for later.

He reviews the notes and continues.

"I snuck into the hospital and I think this guy really could have been a family member or friend of the Hales. He was scarred badly, as if from a fire, and though he wasn't near the Hale house, the paramedics estimated he'd already suffered two days in the cool air in probably this very state." 

The sad whine of them both went unnoticed through the racing thoughts of the human.

"I still think he looks like an age-progressed version of the Beacon Hills basketball team player I found in this picture."

He makes the face as large as he can. It's just a face, and it's blurry.

The first wolf shifts back to human. She says, "Who is this?"

Stiles gasps and then tries to pretend a wolf didn't just shift in front of him to human form and start asking him questions. 

"This is a picture of Peter Hale."

She turns to the other wolf. "Derek!" and she motions at him to stand up, but the wolf Derek declines. It wasn't an order, but a move of cautious excitement. Derek's keeping a wary eye in the human's direction even as his sister looms closer to the phone and examines the picture.

"I'm sorry, madam alpha, or whatever is the right title, but you appear to have no clothes on and I am not prepared to um... talk with you in this manner at this time. And stuff."

She looks at him, and then herself, and shakes her head. "When it comes to werewolves, clothing is as optional as it gets."

"Oh, your kind can't transform your clothing when you shift?" Something subconscious snags his attention. "Are you sure about that?"

She looks at him. Her hair is a little wild, and she's strong even in this form. "I know more about werewolves than you do."

He tucks his phone in his pocket. 

"Okay, look, fine, you want to talk in the nude. You do you, but I really am just going to need to leave right now and clear my head and then I can... I can come back tomorrow, yeah?" He's not sure why he's excited to return. They did nearly eat him several times in this conversation, based on the number of flashes of teeth he caught in the last several minutes.

"Fine, come back tomorrow, but do not tell anyone we were here."

Stiles nods, distracted, and takes a few tries before he gets all his gardening things stuffed back into his bag and gets himself situated for the ride out of the preserve. 

"I'll be here just after five tomorrow, alright? I've got work, but I'll be here, and I'll bring some stuff you can look at. Please try to get some clothes or this is going to be awkward and I am really out of awkward for the day.

"You're really not," the alpha says. Stiles sputters.

"Hey!"

"Hey, family man," she says, referring to his Polish of earlier. "I'm Laura. Who are you?"

"I'm Stiles Stilinski."

The other wolf looks at him and hruffs, almost laughing.

Cripes, these siblings are already annoying him.

"Hey, asshole, it's my name. You'd break yourself trying to pronounce my first name, so be thankful for my gracious manner."

Stiles leaves slowly, trying to go faster, but it takes a while to get his body to let go of the anxiety enough to punish his legs on the pedals and fly as fast as he can without crashing.

Kind of a tall order, some days.

"I cannot believe I just promised I'd come back to chat with those man-eaters!" He gripes at himself. "Do they eat people? How do you even ask someone if they eat people? Especially if they can change shapes and have fangs and sharp pointy parts?" He listens to his intuition. Of course they're not cannibals. Or maybe they are if they're not considered humans. "UGH! They are gonna answer so many questions tomorrow or else!"

Derek has followed him silently for maybe half a mile, listening to the bewildering blitz of self-talk ranging from werewolves to garlic naan bread and Derek just gives up and heads toward the house, where Laura is waiting for him.


	3. The Interposing

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Promises are made, and one is immediately broken. Of course it is because Stiles gets to talking with his father.
> 
> We also begin to see that Derek is not annoyed with the human, and definitely not looking at why, and finds those facts very annoying. He will ignore them, but Laura's already picking up on the something-something energy from Derek toward Stiles.

The sun is low now, shining bright fingers through the shattered window frames and vacant doorways of the shell of this old house. By coincidence of timing and place, Laura stands in a sunny shape on the decrepit porch. Derek listens to her adjusting her stance and watches as her fingers push through a beam of sunlight and trace the crackled texture of the carbonized door frame.

"You didn't stop him and make him tell us where Peter is."

She catches his meaning immediately. "Yeah, there's something at work here keeping me from chasing him away."

"You failed," he says, gesturing broadly at her exposed form. "He can't handle this much woman."

"Well, Derek, I've got the supernatural hookup. We all do. He's going to have to get used to all this." She looks at the smudges on her fingers. "But why didn't you stop him?"

"I don't know. And I only just realized it when I said it." Now Derek looks as confused as she had been. He wasn't even feeling hostile toward the Stiles, and that is the most irritating thing about this.

She shifts her hand through beta shift and to full wolf, then back again. It's a difficult transition, but since she could just focus and do it, Derek just observed as she shifted from human form through partial beta and partial full forms, and then back to full human.

Derek was curious what she was doing, and noticed her smile as he held her fingers up.

Every finger still had dirt.

"I've never thought about how we take dirt and things with us through the shift, but not our clothes."

"Are you suggesting that he can teach us to take clothing or tools into our shift?"

She shrugged her shoulders and grinned. The pack bond resonated with satisfaction, and he rolled his eyes.

"We don't know anything about him."

"I know, but if you could feel it, you'd know that this place needs us, Derek." She looks into the house from across the threshold. "And gardener Stiles is part of whatever is going on here." They were all called here. It's magic that bound them, brought them together, and seems to be managing their introduction.

"Is he the magic user?"

"There is ample potential. Surely you could feel that by the time he left."

"I hate magic," Derek grumbles as he thinks about it. Yes, he could tell Stiles was ignorant of his own potential and that worried Derek more than the fact that this stranger happened to suddenly be part of their lives in a way that captivates his alpha.

Laura snaps her fingers. "Yo, how could you not have heard me?"

Derek raises an eyebrow in defiance. Not his best move, but now it's her turn to roll her eyes and she repeats herself.

"Let's go find Deaton. If he's around, maybe he can help us figure out who this is and what kind of magic is being worked here."

"Can we pass the hospital, too? I'd like to see if we might find uncle Peter."

She nods. That matters a lot to both of them, too. She resolves that before 5pm tomorrow, they'll have gotten at least one answer to the question of what's going on. She leans into a full shift and Derek follows, chasing her as they race into the forest for the long route to the vet's office.

* * *

"My dad is going to kill me when he finds out I was talking with werewolves at the Hale house." He nearly skids to a stop and releases his clenched brake. He isn't a Hollywood stunts expert and he would not have recovered well from a solo crash on the pavement. His ego would be only one of his many bruised parts.

He considers 14 different stories that seem plausible enough, dismissed half of them outright as abominations, and spend the next minutes thinking up some 40 more before settling on the best candidate.

He parked his bike along the side of the house and walked quickly to the front, nearly crashing into his patient and curious father on the porch.

"Hello Stiles. You didn't say why you'd be late, but—"

"I was watching the sunset!" he interjected. Dad glances toward the sun now, indicating that the sunset isn't done yet.

"Nope, you weren't. Do you want to tell me what really happened?"

"Yes!" he squeaks, and then rushes his dad inside with a glance over his shoulder that lacks any essence of subtlety. He's checking the few houses in view to see if anyone in a homes or yard or car or suspicious van might be spying on them. He closes the door quietly and pointedly locks it.

"Are you sure this is necessary, Stiles?"

"Dad, my world has been supernaturally rocked tonight, and what I'm about to tell you will do the same for you."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter title is the name of the spell put in place that lead Stiles to discover the garden and begin unwittingly working the magics that would bring the Hales home.


End file.
